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"An extraordinary thinker and strategist" "Great knowledge and a wealth of experience" "Informative and entertaining as always" "Captivating!" "Very relevant information" "10 out of 7 actually!" "In my over 20 years in the Analytics and Information Management space I believe Alan is the best and most complete practitioner I have worked with" "Surprisingly entertaining..." "Extremely eloquent, knowledgeable and great at joining the topics and themes between presentations" "Informative, dynamic and engaging" "I'd work with Alan even if I didn't enjoy it so much." "The quintessential information and data management practitioner – passionate, evangelistic, experienced, intelligent, and knowledgeable" "The best knowledgeable, enthusiastic and committed problem solver I have ever worked with" "His passion and depth of knowledge in Information Management Strategy and Governance is infectious" "Feed him your most critical strategic challenges. They are his breakfast." "A rare gem - a pleasure to work with."

But how do you do this if you don’t know what data you’ve
got, what state it’s in, or who is responsible for it?

For over 10 years now, I’ve been advocating the idea of
maintaining an Information Asset
Register, as part of an enterprise-wide approach to managing Information as an Asset. (this factsheet from the UK National Archives is a useful
working definition of the term).

This approach goes beyond the systems and applications
auditing process that takes place within IT departments. Rather, the Information
Asset Register is about building up and maintaining a complete, reliable
inventory of data holdings within the organisation, the different contexts
within which the information is (or could be) used, and identification of the
various interested parties – if you
will, it’s an index of “what’s what, where’s where and who’s who”.

The Register is then used as a tool for enabling more
explicit and productive discussions about data between respective creator,
collector and consumer parties. Crucially, by acting as a catalyst for
discussion between information stakeholders, this approach encourages more
collaboration across functional boundaries, establishes points of contact for
more proactive information sharing and breaks down any existing protectionism within
information silos (an approach that a Public Sector colleague of mine refers to
as “POIM” – as in “P*ss Off, It’s Mine…”).

It can be seen that this is therefore not a project - maintaining and publishing the Information
Asset Register quickly becomes a key ongoing service provided by the Data
Governance function. This requires some incremental level of investment in your
Data Governance capability, if only to provide the resources and skills needed
to enable the proactive brokering and facilitation of a data-oriented
discussion. (Some organisations will require higher levels of investment if
basic Information Management practices and capabilities are not yet in place).

The approach isn’t widespread yet, but some progressive
government organisations have been taking the lead (notably the UK National Archives, Australian Commonwealth National Archives and
Queensland GovernmentCIO Office). One challenge as I see it is that these organisations are
taking an approach that is driven out of compliance and records-keeping
requirements, rather than seeing Information Asset Management as a value-adding
opportunity. I’d argue that if the drivers were based on business improvement
and outcome benefits (rather than “meet the basic minimum”), organisations
adopting an Information Asset Management approach would start to see real
transformational change, almost by stealth. (See also my prior post on the
concept of Information
as a Service.)

Anyway, the Information Asset Register is certainly an
approach that I’m adopting within my Data Governance role at UNSW – time will
tell whether it proves to be successful!

Some specific online resources that you may find useful to
help get you started:

2 comments:

I could imagine this exercise has the potential, without some attention, to morph in to collecting up a list of systems, given that generally information in databases is bound up with the application that 'owns' the database. Have you found that to be the case?

Thanks for taking the time to comment Simon. I think you are right to identify this as a key risk to the process.

I think the challenge is that so many people who have come to Information Management have an IT-centric background. Their comfort zone is therefore the systems and applications (the "containers"), rather than the information and its uses (the "contents, in context").

It's also why I'm always at pains to differentiate between "Information technology" capability and "Information Management" capability and to point out the different skills and mind set that are required (see my earlier posts on Information as a service" for further details on this concept http://informationaction.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/information-as-service-what-is-it-and.html). The emphasis MUST be on the information, because that's where the business value lies. In my view, anyone who focusses on the systems agenda has shown themselves to be an IT person, not an Information Management practitioner!

That said, having an inventory of systems is a useful thing in and of itself, as it can provide a "proxy" us to then proceed further and have the discussion about the information assets. What we tend to find is that the relationship of "applications" to "information assets" is almost always a many-to-many matrix. The two perspectives come together as a nexus (which should also intersect with the Business Process catalogue, if we want to get really smart...)

Once this is mapped, then we have the entry point for a frank and fearless discussion about the real value of the data in all it's contexts, and who needs to be held accountable. That's when the fun really starts, because once that's out in the open, then we're in with a fighting chance of bringing some order to the current state of unintended chaos!

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About Me

Alan D. Duncan is Research Director for Business Analytics at Gartner Inc and an evangelist for information and analytics as enablers of better business outcomes.
Formerly a member of the advisory board to QFire Software and Director of Data Governance at UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales), he was named by Information-Management.com in their 2012 list of “Top 12 Data Governance gurus you should be following on Twitter”.
As husband to his ever-forgiving wife (Kylie) and father to two increasingly bemused kids (Ollie and Isla), Alan is reminded every day to aspire to adequacy. To date, he hasn’t achieved it.